Games lubricate the body and the mind.
Benjamin Franklin

It was a cold, icy, snowy New York City winter and Charlene Cruse-Rivera’s kindergarten children at P.S. 244 in Flushing, Queens were not getting outside often to explore the neighborhood outside the school. Earlier in the year they spent a lot of time visiting and playing in a variety of playgrounds as part of their playground inquiry project. What to explore now that it wasn’t as practical to spend much time outside of the school building?

Being a good observer of children, Charlene noticed that a group of the children liked to play board games. She and I discussed this interest and came up with some ideas together. Perhaps it might be opportune to plunge into an in-depth study of board games with the entire class. Would they find this interesting?

Charlene shared her observations with the class and asked them if they would like to spend a week exploring different board games. They seemed interested and so she had one period each day when children got into groups to play a chosen board game. Rather than introduce many games, she had doubles of games so that, for example, each day two groups of children could play Candyland, two could play Checkers, two played Snakes and Ladders, etc.

After playing the games, they discussed their discoveries and observations at the class meeting. Charlene introduced a book where children could write about the different games that they played.

After the week of being immersed in board games, two Choice Time centers were opened. At one center, children could play commercial board games. The second center was one where children could create their own, original games, introduce the games to the class and add them to the game center.

The enthusiasm here built up and even spread to the block center where a group of children created a Dinosaur Game from a block construction.

There’s so much learning that comes from experiences playing and creating board games. (Many of these points can be found on page 129 of my book, Choice Time: How to Deepen Learning Through Inquiry and Play.)
• Children draw on their understandings of number sequence
• Children gain an understanding of greater than and less than.
• Children learn the importance of careful strategizing.
• When children create their own games, they draw on their knowledge of basic game attributes and then have opportunities to creatively improvise.
• In creating their own games, children might decide to make up a game that’s based on a favorite storybook, thereby making some important literacy connections.
• Playing a board game is a social activity.

Here are two Choice Time Reflection Journal entries: